Strangely enough, you often can judge an album by its cover. While the old adage about books and covers remains fairly sound when applied to the products of the publishing industry, there’s a remarkable correlation between awful album art and bands that have plainly run out of ideas. Similarly, an album cover that absolutely leaps out and grabs the viewer often houses a record that contains equally striking music. And then there are those particularly fortuitous times when an album cover somehow conveys the entire sense of the music it fronts and promotes. The second full-length from the U.K. punky … Continue reading One for Friday: Senseless Things, “Ex Teenager”

I’ve long been fascinated by other people’s record collections. This was especially the case back in college, when my radio station pals and I almost couldn’t help but use musical taste as a barometer. Even beyond that, I was deeply interested in discovering new stuff that my friends and acquaintances might have in their respective stashes of well-loved vinyl. (It wasn’t nearly as much fun to go through cassettes or CDs as it was to sit around and listen to records.) Back before one could possess practically any song they liked on little more than a whim and ninety-nine cents … Continue reading One for Friday: The Bolshoi, “Swings and Roundabouts”

What follows is the information I’ve been able to glean about the band Ten Speed Summer. It may be flagrantly incorrect. By some accounts, Ten Speed Summer was a pop-punk band based in Santa Barbara and led by bassist Dave Ehrlich. When he recorded the song “Pantera Fans in Love” for the second volume of the Happy Meals compilation series put out by indie label My Records, he recruited several members of the band Nerf Herder to help him out. According to comments by Nerf Herder band leader Parry Gripp at the time, they liked both Ehrlich and his song … Continue reading One for Friday: Ten Speed Summer, “Pantera Fans in Love”